


Angsty Sherlock One-Shots

by missdeathfrisbee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Drug Use, Feels, Gen, Gore, Johnlock - Freeform, Major character death - Freeform, Please Don't Kill Me, Sad, Self Harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence, angst like woah, car crashes, or hate me, please beware, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4436468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdeathfrisbee/pseuds/missdeathfrisbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is basically a rather sad collection of Sherlock One-Shots. Each one contains mild to very extreme angst. </p>
<p>I will be adding to them every now and then. This is basically a way for a teenage girl to cope with emotions by writing very angsty material. Do enjoy. (Or not, you probably won't enjoy this actually)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Checkmate

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so please take heed of all the tags. There will be violence. In this one, there is suicide, implied self harm, starvation, minor and major character death- trigger warnings. It's artistically written though so could be considered vague. But please beware. Thank you.

_Angsty Sherlock One Shots- Checkmate_

 

He stands pale and crumpled, as he has for weeks. Bent at the spine and joints, as if they no longer support him. Little does, anymore. No mental rods hold the pale and crumpled man upright, no rods that are at liberty to.

"I just feel like I'm losing you," the soldier chokes out, breaking just like his friend had. He'd lost many a man in his time, beneath his fingertips and under bloodied bandages; but never to a demon. Never to a black brain and a dark soul.

The detective says nothing, and his friend hadn't expected anything more. Despite this, the silence chokes him- like when you think about not breathing and then you no longer can. You suck in and out, air rushing in steadily and calmly, but it never feels enough. Your lungs are too small- or is the oxygen too sparse?

"I can't understand what you're going through. Maybe I never will." He falls to his knees and confronts those empty, blank eyes. The stars are gone; the storm is calm. No thoughts dance in those icy irises, no theories or sparkling syllables. No deductions roll on that tongue, a lax muscle locked away behind sealed lips. "Just one word, it could change everything, Sherlock."

There's a flinch at his name, and then eyes locked on tanned faces. There's something, there has to be. Recognition, disbelief, doubt. It's beautiful, even if it only lasts mere seconds.

"John." Cracked and dry, cigarettes on old lungs or deserts in empty mouths. It's pain in a sound, loss in a note, desperation in a name. But it's so much better than the silence and inescapable suffocation.

"Yes, yes, I'm here," Watson soothes, tears pulsing behind his eyes. It hurts, but an agony has never been worth so much. "Are you ready to talk?"

There's a shake of the head, and John deflates a little. It had been weeks of this, weeks of detrimentally shrinking into cushions. Weeks of a soldier pouring tea into an unwilling throat, loaded with sugar to stop his weight from shedding. Weeks of lifting arms to rid them of the cloth they bear, of eyeing deep scars and cloaking them in ignorance- blissful ignorance. It was futile to look at them now, there weren't new, nor were they old. They were there. And that was that.

"It's not your fault," the doctor chokes out, rubbing the detectives knee. "Please know that. And we can work through this. Don't let me lose you again."

"Fault," Sherlock says quietly, eyes distant. "It's mine."

"No. It's _not_ your fault they're dead." A wince, and then a drop of salt water. The soldier leans forward, apologetic. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said-"

"Where's Mrs Hudson?" Sherlock asks weakly, and John's heart throws itself into his throat. This happens whenever he needs more tea to stop his organs from giving up- he always asks for his landlady, with her able fingers and sugary brew. But she's not here. No one is. It's just John and Sherlock now.

"She's not here," Watson rasps, standing from his uncomfortable crouch. "I'm sorry but-"

"Gone."

"Yes."

And then he is too. Eyes empty, mouth sealed. Wrists itchy and mauled, brain silent and dark. John curses, the familiar feeling that he's wasted his minutes of lucidity with the broken detective now returning. Wasted time, wasted mental capacity. It was all a _waste_.

Bodies. Those lifeless beings that now lay beneath the earth were a waste. It wasn't necessary, the motive was non-existent. It was all for the game- like chess. You never touch the king; no- you strip him of his army, of his kingdom and allies. You rip his friends from him, so he has no choice but to step down, from the game, from life. He was defeated. Almost.

Dr. Watson didn't believe it. Those amicable cadavers wouldn't ruin his flatmate; Sherlock's willpower was strong and inexplicable. It wasn't checkmate yet; because the detective was still here, still reachable- even if those moments of clear transmission were brief.

This wasn't over until Sherlock joined them, six feet under.

"Tea," John says, nodding to himself. It would have to do. It was the only remedy he could think of currently, the only remedy for weeks. Sherlock cheeked pills, overthrew injections, belittled therapy. Tea would have to do, as ineffective as it was.

The soldier wanders to the kitchen, and finds himself boiling the kettle again. Fill to the check, drop teabags into awaiting cups. It was so mundane, so simple and repetitive nowadays that John almost finds it humorous. If it weren't for the hollow detective in the chair a wall away, he'd have outright laughed. Let it slip from his chest and guffaw, cackle and wheeze until tears framed his smiles. But he couldn't, because the hollow man needs silence and tea and laughter wasn't going to get the doctor anywhere.

The kettle whistles like a ghost, and John prepares to remove it from the stove when a shot rings over the howling. The steam pouring from the spout can't prevent John from freezing, his hand seizing over the handle and his breath hitching in his trachea. There had been no scream, no shuffle or groan of effort to simply lift himself from the chair. Just a single shot, a bang that had come alone, a note that was far more haunting than the frightening wails of boiling water.

Seconds later John finds him there, now in John's chair, gun in hand. No shot on the wall this time, no smiling face. Even in death the detective has a grip on the revolver, his head thrown back in serenity and his pale throat exposed to the streams of sunlight. John howls, he screams, he sobs until he's empty and can only stare into those blank eyes. He was wrong- before they had been full, only now were they empty. Unseeing, not even shining with agony or tears. He can't bear to close them, but he does. Weathered fingers force soft and pale lids to flutter shut. And now it looks like he's sleeping, but of course, John knows better.

"I just feel like I'm losing you," John had said, when in reality, he was too far gone.

The hole in his head was proof. The monotonous dripping of thick blood onto wooden floors was solid evidence. The gaping wound in John's heart that only now showed itself screamed one word, concluding the final chapter of their story.

Checkmate.


	2. The Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is basically a rather sad collection of Sherlock One-Shots. Each one contains mild to very extreme angst.
> 
> I will be adding to them every now and then. This is basically a way for a teenage girl to cope with emotions by writing very angsty material. Do enjoy. (Or not, you probably won't enjoy this actually)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take heed of warnings. This includes angst, vague descriptions of gore, car crash, major character death. Don't hate me. Thank you for reading.

_Angsty Sherlock One-shots- The Scream_

 

The last thing he remembers is the scream.

It wasn't blood-curdling, or chilling. In fact, it made his blood rush through his veins in spurts and starts, and it heated his head and wrists and he just wanted to get there, be there, _help_.  
But he couldn't, because he was trapped beneath a metal _door_ , for God's sake. Doors were supposed to open, but all he felt was _shut_.

He doesn't know how long the blackness consumes him, but it can't be long, because there are no blue lights. And blue lights don't take long to arrive.  
Then it comes again. The scream. The hot-wristed, door-shutter scream. The weak groan that increases in pitch just enough for it to be a cry, a plea. _I'm here_ , it says. _I'm dying_.

"Sherlock!" John calls, but it comes out too clear and so he isn't sure if it's real, or in his head. Because his voice should be broken. It feels broken.

"Sherlock!" he tries again, and instead almost replicates the scream. The scream replies. What a sadistic conversation.

A noise enters the scene, a noise like the blue lights sound. Repetitive, up and down, annoying. Comforting. 

And yet, the door is still shut.

John doesn't like it anymore. He has never liked barricades, and he isn't going to start now. He's a doctor- a quick body assessment tells him nothing major is wrong. He's a soldier- a metal door a couple of inches thick shouldn't stop him from reaching _the scream_.

It comes again, weak, desperate, _agonising_. It's enough motivation for John to push with each ounce of strength in his soul, in vain or not.

The first thing he sees is sky. It's strangely blue for London, almost cloudless, and John views this as a show of mockery- he deserves a pathetic fallacy, not bloody sunshine. It should be raining, it should be dark. _It should be someone else_.

He's only managed to push it half way off, so he's gained vision but not mobility. Twisting like a God damned _pretzel_ he looks for the scream, the shrieking kitten and mewing tiger. The hot-wristed, door-shutter scream. It doesn't come again for a while, so John is lost, until it shines like a flickering beacon; dimming, dimming, dimming.

"Sherlock!" He says it this time. Shouts it at the scream, now known as the mop of blood-soaked curly hair, as the closed pale eyes, as the singed cheeks and bones. Known as the bent leg, the withered arm, withered like a neglected rose on a shady windowsill. Known as the torn trench coat and deflated collar. Known as a slick metal pole through a shuddering torso.

"Oh God, oh _Jesus_ ," John pants, trying to kick the door off, shoo the mockery away. "Sherlock, Sherlock! Shit, _talk to me_!"

The scream again, now so quiet it is merely a whimper. His body arches in pain and shudders again, and John knows he can't breathe. The air moves in quick short gasps, in his mouth to come hissing from the end of the pole. He's dead, he's fucking _dead_ and John knows it already, even before the detective does. He can bloody _deduce_ it and it's the most shitty deduction and he doesn't want to be smart, he doesn't want to.

"Talk to me!"

"John?" He sounds scared, and suddenly the doctor fills with hatred- this man, the world's only consulting detective, this _arrogant bastard_ should not sound scared. He glares at the pulsing blue sky and lifts his arm a degree to flip the heavens off. 

"It's okay," John soothes when Sherlock groans, eyeing the now parked ambulance with agitation. "Everything will be fine, okay? Help's coming."

"Hurts," the detective chokes out, hissing and trying to shy away from the metal standing like a flagpole from his chest. "Can't... breathe."

"I know, I know," John says, wriggling several more centimetres from beneath the door. "I'm coming."

"Sir!" A parademic calls, having spotted John first. "Don't move, you may have broken something!"

"I haven't!" John spits, shoving the door the rest of the way off. "Help my friend!"

The woman's eyes widen when she sees the speared man lying broken on the floor. Something dies in her eyes, and John's too. But for both their sakes, she approaches Sherlock cautiously, swinging her bag round and kneeling beside him.

"It's alright," she says, letting her proffesional tone slip through deliberately, in order to convince them that there is a chance. John struggles to his knees, crawling over and puffing. "Your lung's been punctured, but once we remove the pole it should be fine."

Sherlock was too out of it to spot the intentional mistake. He just clenched his teeth and let his hands twitch as each wave of agony ripped through him. "John," he rasps when the soldier comes into view. "O... okay?"

John laughs hollowly, shaking his head. "I'm fine, you git. And... you'll be too."

"Prob... probability is-"

"Shut up," John snaps, shuffling closer. "Arse."

Sherlock smirks, face relaxing as the shock numbs him. "Mm."

"Stay with me, okay?" Sherlock watches him lazily. "I mean it."

"So... bossy."

"Tit."

"Not long now," the paramedic adds, giving John a sad smile. "Not long until we can pull the pole out." John knew they weren't going to. Everyone knew, all the trauma surgeons that had arrived had shaken their heads and walked away, giving the pair their privacy. But he knew Sherlock was mentally preparing for the pain that was never going to come. 

Maybe that was a good thing. That he'd die numbed by trauma and blood loss.

_No_ , John thinks, face crumpling. _Sherlock dying is not a good thing. In pain or not._

Sherlock's breathing had calmed, now broken by crackling and coughs, but too long to be normal. His eyes were half lidded, and John panicked.

"The murderer," John yelps, grasping on loose threads. "You figured it out?"

"John."

"Was it the... the step-dad? Or the postman? You were speculating-"

" _John._ "

"No," John insists, shaking his head violently. "No, you'll be fine. We'll just have to tell Lestrade tomorrow." 

"Tell... Lestrade... what?"

John grimaces, stray tears catching in the corner of his mouth. He takes Sherlock's pale hand in his own, squeezing it in comfort, more for him than his friend. The detective moves his head to the side, regarding their entwined hands contentedly. 

"People will talk," he whispers, a single drop of salt water falling and splashing on the bloodied pavement. 

"It's all they ever do," John replies as his best friend sleeps, breath escaping for one last time and washed out blue eyes drifting shut.

John hears the scream again.

But this time, it comes from him.


End file.
